MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti)-Gazprom said Tuesday that all the necessary documents on the terms of prices for natural gas supplies had been sent to Ukraine.
"Our exhaustive proposals both on the draft inter-governmental protocol for 2006 and on the drafts of two contracts - on natural gas transit and supplies - were reliably sent to the Ukrainian government and [national gas company] Naftogaz Ukrainy," Gazprom's Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said.
Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said Ukraine was expecting two documents from Russia.
"We are expecting two documents," he told a news conference. "The first one is the proposed intergovernmental agreement. And the second one is the decision on the price formula [for gas]."
Medvedev slammed Kiev for the remarks.
"Such statements show once again that the Ukrainian position has not been well formulated and give us the impression that Ukraine does not have a unified decision-making center."
"We do not even know with whom to discuss the issue," Medvedev said, adding that only a few days remained until the end of gas supply and transit contracts.
"The major issues of the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine have not been resolved yet," he said. "Ukraine's refusal to sign a transit contract according to European standards is nothing but an attempt to apply pressure on Russia and Europe in order to gain advantage in the discussion of gas supplies for Ukraine.
"The transit contract must be signed immediately," Medvedev said.
In the past five years, Ukraine has been buying Russian gas for a preferential price of $50 per 1,000 cu m. Gazprom decided to charge the country the European market price of $160, beginning with 2006. Ukraine said it would agree to the new price structure if Gazprom paid transit fees of $3.5 per 1,000 cu m per 100 km for the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine.
In its decision to raise the gas price, Gazprom referred to Article 2 of the agreement, which says that the volumes of Russian gas transit via Ukraine and transit payments were to be specified in annual intergovernmental protocols for a specific period.
Gazprom said that in accordance with these annual protocols both parties were to make the relevant amendments to the bilateral transit contract.
"Therefore, Russia's proposals to lay down a new price for natural gas and new transit fees in the intergovernmental protocol for 2006 in accordance with the current gas prices on the European market do not in any way contradict earlier agreements," Gazprom said earlier.
